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Turkey a LA Daube

A boiled turkey stuffed with oysters, bread crumbs, herbs, and butter, served with oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turkey a LA Daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the boned turkey with chopped oysters, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, shallots, thyme, parsley, and butter.

  2. Sew up the turkey and tie it in a cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the turkey in water until cooked through.

  2. Serve with oyster sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by boiling in its cloth.
Oysters
Add a briny, savory flavor to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and butter, keeping the stuffing moist and tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the stuffing.

The step that matters

Boil the turkey until cooked through. A stuffed, tied bird is dense, so heat must reach the center to make it safe to eat. Boiling in a cloth holds the stuffing in place while it cooks.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, oyster, bread, pepper, thyme, parsley, butter):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, oyster, bread, pepper, thyme, parsley, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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